Most of my informants explicitly described their relationships in romantic terms. Proceeding with the bonds that people built in relation to 18th century drama, musicians, and celebrities alike – with more than 500 American informants as a sample – Caughey ends up with the trends of the time that are characterized by a specific romantic or sexual interest: In a seminal monograph Imaginary Social Worlds, Caughey (1984) tracks the Western history of what he calls ‘fantasy relationships’ all the way down to the lifelong bonds that people in different cultures have conventionally had with gods, monarchs, spirits, and other figures that they may never have had the chance to meet in person. Conclusions end the article (section “Conclusion”). This is followed by presenting the results (section “Results”) and contextualizing them in previous research on parasociality and sexuality (section “Discussion”), which especially in Japanese media psychological and psychiatric literature have been discussed before (section “Coda: a lost chapter of Japanese media psychology”). Thereafter we introduce the method and data (section “Method and Data”). The next section “Background” provides a brief overview of the most relevant existing psychological theory related to fictophilia. 93) may turn out as a valid position from which to explain fictophilia as a developed form of ‘pretend play’ also in older populations (cf. In this regard, Vygotsky’s (1933/1978) observation that “imagination in adolescents and school children is play without action” (p. Lastly, whereas the feelings that determine fictophilia may not be common in terms of prevalence, they may exaggerate what most humans experience to lesser degrees, with the caveat that future research is needed to better understand how fictophilic emotions and feelings overlap with everyday human social attachment. Our findings do not indicate a need to change the current state of affairs. At the time of writing, fictophilia is not recognized or proposed as a specific diagnostic condition by the World Health Organization (ICD-11) or the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-5) (but see ‘paraphilia’ in both manuals). Second, the present intention is not to propose fictophilia as a problem or a disorder. Whereas consuming related fiction belongs to fictophilia, its defining feelings go beyond the act of perception, as people ‘attach’ to characters for a significant length of time. Accordingly, the goal here is to better understand what fictophilia is.īefore moving onward, we highlight that fictophilia, as we approach it, is a phenomenon distinct from immediate human media responses such as motor enactment, embodied involvement, and pre-reflective simulation processes that occur during consuming fiction (see Power, 2008 Kuzmièová, 2012 Kukkonen and Caracciolo, 2014). The study is based on a qualitative analysis of 71 related online discussions, the implications of which are ultimately discussed in wider cross-cultural contexts and Japanese media psychology in particular. Since our analysis is not limited to sexual or romantic feelings alone, we choose to use the more general label, fictophilia, henceforth (- philia from Greek ϕ ι λ ι ´ α, ‘friendship’ or ‘love’). All these labels point toward a strong and lasting feeling of love, infatuation, or desire for a fictional character. This article provides an explorative analysis and conceptualization of a recently established notion that has at least three popular labels: fictosexuality, fictoromance, and fictophilia.
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